Child abuse charges dropped against former Hallandale High principal and wife

March 15, 2013|By Rafael Olmeda, Sun Sentinel

They lost their house. They lost their car. For more than a year, they lost their children. But the former principal of Hallandale High School and his wife, a teacher, will not be losing their freedom.

Broward prosecutors dropped aggravated child abuse charges on Friday against Darren Jones, 44, and his wife, Serena, 43, just days before jury selection was scheduled to begin in the first of their trials.

Jones and his wife each faced a maximum of life in prison if found guilty of beating their 16-year-old daughter in 2011. Instead, the former Cooper City couple were celebrating the end of a two-year legal ordeal that cost them their jobs with the Broward County School District.

"We believed that the Lord would vindicate us," Jones said Friday in a telephone interview. "This was just a light affliction. I have no right to be angry at one solitary person."

His wife agreed.

Prosecutors did not explain Friday why they decided not to pursue the case. Such decisions are typically laid out in a formal memorandum, but it was not available as of late Friday afternoon.

Attorney Eric Schwartzreich, who represented both suspects, credited prosecutors Tony Loe and Hussein Sony El Rashidy for ultimately seeing the case as an incident of discipline rather than child abuse.

The couple met with their attorneys, prosecutors and their daughter this week, with the family members reconciling and apologizing to each other, Schwartzreich said.

Darren Jones was originally arrested on Jan. 15, 2011, accused of beating his eldest daughter with an electrical cord, causing scars and bruising on her arms, legs, back and hands, according to a police report.

Serena Jones, a teacher at Driftwood Middle School in Hollywood, was arrested two months later on the same charge, though investigators said her role in the incident was a failure to protect her daughter.

From the outset, the couple presented a united front, hiring the same lawyer as an indication that they would not turn on each other.

"I've always believed that this was a case of corporal punishment and not child abuse," said Schwartzreich. "There's a difference."

He said the charges destroyed his clients' lives, forcing them to watch helplessly as their three children were taken from their home and placed in foster care. Their younger children, a girl and a boy, were 10 and 7 at the time of their arrests.

"It was heart-wrenching," Serena Jones said. "They have really been troopers. It was very hard on them at the beginning. But thankfully our son was placed in our neighborhood and we were able to visit."

The couple asked the Sun Sentinel to withhold the names of their children.

The younger children were allowed to live with the couple again as of last September. Schwartzreich said it was a sign of the Jones' innocence that the state thought it was in their children's best interest to live with them even while child abuse charges were pending.

Jones said he was fired from his job with the school district, while his wife was suspended without pay. Both will now petition to get their jobs back and request pay for the time they missed.

Jones had managed to find a part time job working the graveyard shift at a machinery warehouse. When his car was repossessed, a fellow member of Jesus Ministries Family Worship Center in Miramar came through with a scooter. When the couple lost their home to foreclosure, another family with a large enough house took them in for a modest rent.

"Our church family was really awesome in how they supported us," Serena Jones said.

School district spokeswoman Nadine Drew said the dismissal of the criminal charges opens the door for the school district to conduct its own review and determine whether to reinstate the Joneses.

As for the eldest daughter, now 18, Darren and Serena Jones said it will be up to her when, or whether, to come home. Now a student at Florida Atlantic University, she is free to make up her mind, her father said.